BBC Forces Microsoft Employee To Remove The Only Good BBC App On Windows Phone

BBC doesn’t have a Windows Phone presence, at least not officially. However, an unofficial news app created by Microsoft employee, Lawrence Gripper, was too close to the real thing for comfort, as the Beeb has asked the developer to remove it from the Windows Store.

“These have been a labor of love for me since the launch of Windows Phone in 2010 and it is with great sadness today that I removed both applications from the store,” said Gripper on his personal blog. He claims that there have been over 500,000 downloads of the Windows Phone 7.5 and Windows Phone 8 apps together, and the removal was possibly due to its popularity.

The BBC announced an upcoming iPlayer app, which is ostensibly a web wrapper for the platform, but without the unofficial BBC News app, which was as good as the real thing in many ways, users of the platform are going to be at a great disadvantage.

While currently available, BBC News should be removed from the Windows Store in the next few days.